ICI (programming language)

The ICI Programming Language is a general purpose interpreted, computer programming language originally developed by Tim Long in 1992. It has dynamic typing and flexible data types, with the basic syntax, flow control constructs and operators of C. It can be considered broadly similar to Perl, with which it is roughly contemporary. Like Perl, it also has tight integration with regular expressions.

Primitive data types in ICI include integers, reals, strings, files, safe pointers, and regular expressions. Aggregate data types are arrays, sets, and associative tables. Sets can be heterogeneous, nested, and support the usual set operations: union, intersection, etc.

The language supports subroutines and nested modules. All variables are lexically scoped at the subroutine or module level, but unlike most structured languages, ICI allows the current scope to be adjusted (Tcl, for example, also allows this).

Although ICI is not object-based, many object programming features can be emulated in the language by using data structure inheritance feature called super-structures.

To support application development, ICI has C-like file I/O and system interface support, as well as a high-level event trigger facility. The language also has a modest standard library of built-in functions.

ICI can be compared to Lua, Tcl and many other Extension/embeddable scripting languages. ICI's core language and source code are free for any use without even GPL based licensing, thus making ICI a convenient choice for commercial applications.

It is not an acronym [ [http://ici.sourceforge.net/faq.html The ICI Programming Language: Frequently Asked Questions ] ] .

References

External links

* [http://ici.sourceforge.net/ The ICI homepage]
* [http://sourceforge.net/projects/ici/ ICI Sourceforge project home]
* [http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3600 ICI download page]